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Friday, February 6, 2009

censorship

I always found censorship to be absurd. Censorship makes a thing forbidden, it makes it tantalizing and draws people to it. A lot of the books on the "Banned books list" are, to be honest, drek. The ONLY reason some of them are still in print is because people made a fuss about them, canonizing an otherwise dull book because it had a few sexually charged or blasphemous scenes.

There was a TV show a season or two ago called "The Book of Daniel." It was slow moving, boring, poorly written and poorly acted. It lasted about half a season and would have died sooner had one of those religious parents' action groups not started a massive campaign to get the network to cancel it. I'd never even HEARD of it until they raised a ruckus. Something that would have died a quiet, quick death was prolonged and got a hell of a lot more exposure than it deserved because people were outraged.

Of course, that might have been the point of protesting that particular show. When something terrible is attacked and it dies the death earned by its low quality, the not jobs who were protesting get to claim credit for its downfall. It's kind of like the career of Andrew Dice Clay. I know people who claim it was moral outrage against his act that ended his career. The truth is that he isn't all that funny. The moral outrage against him prolonged his career.